


Systematic, hydromatic

by myoue



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mechanics, Car Accidents, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 22:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2523461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myoue/pseuds/myoue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren is a car mechanic, and Levi can't help purposefully damaging his car in silly ways just to go see him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Systematic, hydromatic

**Author's Note:**

> why, it's greased lightning!! ...that has nothing to do with the fic i'm sorry.
> 
> i posted this on [tumblr](http://geychou.tumblr.com/post/72575653885/levi-falls-in-love-with-eren-a-car-mechanic-and) a while ago. and it seems i might have said some things... like how this fic sucks...... but i take it back so it's here now due to some extenuating circumstances haha ha...

The first time Levi had to go in, it wasn’t his fault.

He was drinking a coffee, black espresso and slightly burnt, with two hands firmly on the wheel when he’d suddenly gotten rear-ended and lurched forward to a stop, spilling the coffee through the lid onto his lap and all over his gear shift.

Even though the light in front of him was green and he was exhausted as all hell, he’d gotten out of his car in a fit of yelling and swearing rage at the driver behind him, which ended in rude hand gestures for the both of them as Levi got back in his car with the other guy’s license plate and contact information in hand, given to him rather unwillingly.

He’d driven around for half an hour with a hanging bumper, and he was considering just leaving it like that (who the fuck cares about a hanging bumper?) but the faint scraping noise as it dragged on the road was starting to get to him.

He didn’t want to make it a regular occurrence to have to go in to this car mechanic place that was the closest one to him at the time of the accident, but ended up being half way across town from where he actually lived. However, it seemed like he didn’t have much of a choice since they’d taken in his car, inspected the damage, and informed him it needed to be with them for a while.

Levi had gotten up from the shiny manager’s office chair in a huff without another word and strode straight through to the garage in the back. Through the lines of cars, he’d spotted his own car along with a body that was kneeling down near the bumper, and Levi headed to him for an answer that he could actually accept.

“How long will it take?” he demanded, stern and with crossed arms as soon as he’d made his way directly behind the kneeling mechanic. “It’s a bumper not an arm and a leg.”

“What?” was the clueless reply, as the guy started to turn around and stand to his feet.

Levi gritted his teeth. “How long,” he repeated, but stopped and stuttered half way unintentionally as he saw the boy in front of him, saw his face and his side swept hair and his eyes, “…will it be?”

The mechanic was wearing tatty overalls with rolled up sleeves and heavy-duty boots, all things that contrasted with his clearly boyish face and innocently quizzical expression as he stood there thinking about Levi’s question for a second.

Levi had almost missed the answer as he considered whether schools even let out at this time for this kid to be here. He’d only just snapped out of his thoughts because the boy began to turn around and Levi could no longer stare at those supple-looking cheeks, soft yet smeared with oil, that framed his face beneath a pure crystal of glimmering eyes.

“We’re going to have to take off the whole thing,” the boy informed him, being surprisingly straightforward instead of the usual convoluted answer Levi was used to getting from money-grubbing mechanics. Then again, it could have been the fact that this kid looked like a part-timer – he was young enough – and perhaps he was only here for pocket change.

He gestured around the car’s bumper as he talked, and Levi noticed that his forearms looked rather muscular. Strong. For a kid, at least.

“So it’ll finish in a few days,” he finished saying, walking around the car, perhaps inspecting for more damage.

“That’s fine,” Levi had said without thinking, and he found that he didn’t mind as much how long it took anymore; a little bit of stress actually dissipating. As long as his car was properly fixed, he wouldn’t mind taking the train to work. And to the store. And to here. For a few days.

When the boy gave him a wordless smile standing across from the hood of his car, Levi knew he could trust him. It felt weirdly stirring.

The next couple of times Levi went in were just to check up on his car. It was on the way home from work anyway, so he figured he might as well. He knew his visits couldn’t logically speed up the process, but it gave him mental reassurance that his car wasn’t being slacked with and actually being worked on. By that one mechanic, hopefully.

It had only been one day but he’d walked in there again anyway, looking for the familiar face a little ways away and ignoring the insistent words of the manager to him, who really needed to fix his bolo tie and shut up. Levi walked over to his car and stopped to look down at the mechanic boy who was now fiddling with the bumper, having been removed already and currently lying on the ground.

The boy looked up to widen a smile and Levi’s heart might have jumped. “Oh, hey it’s you,” he’d said as he launched straight into talk about bumper-fixing and mechanical things that Levi didn’t know how to internalize.

Instead he watched the lips that spoke and the eyebrows that creased together in a concerned line whenever a problem was mentioned.

“It’s fine,” Levi had said yet again in a bored drawl after the spiel got too long for him to handle. “You can take your time.”

It wasn’t as if Levi actually wanted his car to take a long time to get fixed. But even though he was already tired of trains and irritated at the crowds that he was forced to squeeze himself into instead of the lonesome comfort of his car, these feelings washed away with one look at the mechanic boy’s sunshining face and soothingly calm voice that gave him obnoxious flutters in his stomach.

Levi might have stood there unnecessarily long because mechanic boy had started making light conversation that wasn’t about his car. Talking about the weather, and then the news, and then what kind of work he’d been doing just earlier because he had suddenly gotten more excited and it seemed like working at a testosterone-filled garage was the sort of place where no one else would listen to his babble.

Levi had still awkwardly interjected, saying he’d needed to go and that he’d be back when his car was fixed. The boy looked sad to see him go, and Levi was a little sorry that he did.

Of course, Levi’s car was done on time just like it was foreseen to be. And when it was back in his possession, he’d driven around town feeling like it was brand new even though it was only the bumper that was fixed and not the engine or the inside that had been touched. Still, it gave him a warm cozy feeling, like his car had been blessed by an angel.

The next time Levi went in was not his fault either. Well, it could have been but he couldn’t have known for sure.

The car was making what he’d vaguely described as “weird noises”. He’d been driving around this area when he’d first heard it and wanted to get it checked out as soon as possible before he found out it was something serious or had gotten to a stage that wasn’t curable.

However, his car had (unfortunately) been assigned to some other mechanic guy who looked older and scruffier and sometimes said things too fast that he ended up almost clipping off his tongue. Levi had felt only a microsecond of disappointment before he’d spotted the familiar mechanic boy and immediately started making his way towards him, lazily and uncaringly telling the scruffy mechanic to “figure this shit out” as he walked away.

He’d reached the boy, who greeted him with surprise and then a warm smile and asked Levi what brought him here again in such a short time. That smile was like dreary snow melting on a lively spring day.

“My car is making weird noises,” Levi had said, not sure if he wanted to clarify further in order to get the boy to come with him over there and abandon whatever he was doing with someone else’s car.

“Oh,” the boy replied, scrubbing his dirty hands on an even dirtier cloth, “Well that could be anything, really. Have you been properly maintaining your car?”

Levi shoved his hands further into the pockets of his trench coat and sniffed. “I haven’t been doing much.”

Another smile, one that was definitely too pure-hearted to be real. “Then I should teach you what to do sometime.”

Levi felt a blooming in his chest, but all he could do was stutter out a short “Yeah” before turning around and walking quickly away.

The noise, it turned out, was from the car door not being shut properly and air was getting through causing the whistling sound. The solution: close the door all the way. Perhaps open and close it a few times to make sure it’s closed.

The final time Levi went in (which was not technically or physically the final time by any standards) was definitely his fault.

He’d been making a right turn at an intersection rather sharply and nicked a telephone pole, scraping the side of the passenger door all the way to the rear end. It left a rather large scraped gash (scratch) that Levi thought looked particularly ugly, even if it didn’t seem to affect the performance of his car. Therefore, he had no choice but to go in and find out the best plan of action to fix this.

He was greeted by several other employees and the manager whom didn’t even give him a second glance anymore, as he parked his car outside the garage and got out. He was looking around when the mechanic boy actually came walking up to him this time and asking the usual question, although with a suspiciously knowing tone.

The mechanic boy explained in four words what the problem was.

“It’s easy to fix,” the boy said as he chuckled, and Levi wanted to know what was so funny. “Just some paint and coating will do the trick.”

“Oh, really,” Levi had said, thinking his expected hour long visit was reduced to five minutes just like that. He was wondering if he maybe should have banged it up a little more before he’d gotten here.

“I can go with you. To the paint store, I mean,” the boy said and Levi had his heart jump for the umpteenth time that month. “If you want, that is…”

Levi wanted to vigorously nod his head and accept this wonderful proposal, but before he could properly think about his choice of words he’d already managed to blurt out, “But you’re filthy.”

He cringed internally even in the midst of saying that and watched the face in front of him drop in disappointment. No no, that is not what he meant to say.

“I mean..!” Levi’s voice rose before the boy could turn around and walk out of his life forever. “You should… clean up a little.”

That’s also not quite what he meant to say, and the fact that he might have unintentionally offended this innocent kid who had only been kind and caring to him up to this point only served to make Levi feel queasy with regret.

He was panicking because his communication skills were about as good as his driving skills, and suddenly in the next moment Levi found himself reaching forward to yank the boy’s collar down without thinking at all what he was doing, only that he’d surreptitiously stole a kiss from the surprised lips in front of him and sealed them gently and unwaveringly with his own. It was pleasant and sweet and Levi didn’t realize he’d been wanting this until after he’d already let go, only having been a few seconds but he felt himself burn from the widened eyes that gaped confusedly at him.

Levi swivelled his head around, hoping that nobody saw them and he desperately wanted to go sit in his car right now and mope.

He quickly turned to walk away embarrassedly before he felt a hand clasp around his arm and the boy that said in a discretely small voice, “Please wait for me. After my shift ends.”

Levi felt something catch in his throat, but he was no less delirious and happy that he hadn’t messed everything up as he nodded wordlessly to go wait anxiously in his car. He didn’t know when the kid’s shift ended, nor how long he’d have to sit here waiting, but he found himself uncaring until the sky turned a little darker and a knock to his passenger window caught his attention to show him a crooked smile.

And it would only be a little while after until Levi realized that he was already driven mad with love long before he even learned that the mechanic boy’s name was Eren.

 


End file.
